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<title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Television Shows</title>
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<h1>Television Shows</h1>

<p id="dolphins">Bill Wattenburg’s first television show was an expose on the slaughter of
dolphins by tuna fishing fleets called “The Last Days of the Dolphins”,
which Westinghouse Broadcasting aired nationally in 1975. Strong complaints from
major food company advertisers who market tuna almost cancelled the show. The
original celebrity host had backed out after major advertisers complained.
Wattenburg agreed to replace him. This shocking documentary showed the needless
slaughter of 500,000 dolphins a year because tuna fisherman refused to change
the crude nets they had been using for decades. Congress outlawed the old nets a
week after this dramatic show was aired nationwide.</p>

<p id="KPIX">Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. (KPIX Channel 5 TV, San Francisco) then asked Bill
Wattenburg to host a new half-hour newsmagazine show which aired on Friday
nights primetime (The People’s Five Show) from September 1975 to 1977. They used one of
the first TV mini-cams to shoot the show “on the street” with only one
cameraman-director, host Wattenburg, and no scriptwriters.</p>

<p>This show and its format were later expanded to become Westinghouse’s
“Evening Magazine”, which has been syndicated nationwide since 1977 <i>[usually
under the name “P.M. Magazine” outside of the SF broadcasting area</i>—<i>PKS]</i>.
Wattenburg returned to weekend talk radio and his scientific work at the
university when the TV show went to five nights a week.</p>

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